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The camera pans towards Melie Kerr and zooms at her. There are happy tears ready to flow down like Niagara Falls. Then, you see two hands above her head, getting the crowd to join in and clap with her.
You could see how much everything meant to her at that moment. She’s clapping, but her face says a different story. A few moments later, that camera pans towards Suzie Bates and then towards Sophie Devine. You know where the camera will pan next; Lea Tahuhu was aware of that, too.
Minutes later, however, she broke down while hugging her sister Jess Kerr. The Kerr family is already a cricketing royalty; it is not just her or her sister who have played cricket at some professional level.
Starting from her maternal granddad, Bruce Murray, dad, Rob, and mom, Jo, they have all played cricket at some level, international or not. But this moment between the two sisters sums up Melie, the person. You know her as a cricketer, but at least several thousand people away from the cricketing field know her as the ‘voice for mental health’.
She was already a winner off the field, and now, with this Women’s T20 World Cup winners medal around her neck and a trophy in her hand, she’s a winner on it, too. Till about a week before the all-important final, she was 23.
A week later, she turned 24, and it was only ironic that New Zealand’s last World Cup title came back when she was just about three months old. In a very odd way, it was as poetic as it could get; she was perhaps the chosen one.
When 22-year-old Virat Kohli lifted his hero Sachin Tendulkar in the 2011 ODI World Cup, it was symbolic that the future was giving the past a perfect send-off. 13 years later, when Melie started the tournament at the age of 23, all she wanted to do was give her hero Bates, the perfect send-off.
You could see the narrative from a mile away. The two stuck through thick and thin, even earning themselves the nicknames Yogi (Bates) and Boo-Boo (Melie) from the iconic cartoon show “The Yogi Bear Show”. In the video posted by the White Ferns, you can see how closely knitted the bond is between the two.
On the field, you can see how competitive the two can get and how the White Ferns wouldn’t have even got to their most significant moment in cricketing history if not for Yogi, Boo-Boo and “The Yogi Bear Show”.
"I looked at Suzie and said, 'Suzie I think you should bowl,' and she said to Sophie, 'bowl me, I want to bowl it'. That's huge from your leader, your most capped player, to step up again in that moment. She's done it before for us, she's a bit of a last-over specialist, and she likes to call herself Michael Jordan. I think that was a Michael Jordan moment," Melie said after New Zealand’s narrow 13-run win over West Indies.
You could see her cricketing acumen, and for a 24-year-old to be thinking quickly on her feet at perhaps the most crucial juncture of New Zealand’s 2024 T20 World Cup journey, it already sets her apart. There’s no doubt why she is considered the White Ferns’ present and the future.
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Amelia in Dubai
Think about it: if Netflix you are reading this piece, it could be an apt description for a Melie Kerr documentary. Like Emily in Paris, this could be an ultimate superhit.
Before we lay out all the numbers in front of you, let’s start with some trivia. Melie started playing cricket at the age of 17. That’s an age where most of us are still trying to figure out what the rat is happening in our lives.
But by then, not only was Melie sorted, but she was already being called the ‘future of the White Ferns’. Breaking records is any way in her DNA, she has been doing that since the year she made her debut, smashing 232, albeit against Ireland. It still stands the test of time, and perhaps, always will.
To do such a thing at 17, you have to be ‘god’s gift’.
Melie is one such wunderkind. She’s unusual, extremely gifted, and, if anything, this World Cup has taught us, extremely intelligent. Before the tournament, she broke all kinds of batting records, but now, she is breaking bowling records.
Little did an 8-year-old Melie know that she would be integral to inspiring a generation of cricketers to take up the sport. Because all she was thinking about then was ‘enjoying the sport’ and, more importantly, ‘pretending to bowl spin’.
Pretending to bowl spin
There was even a point when Melie was pretending to bowl spin because she is now just acing the toughest art in world cricket: bowling leg-spin. A certain Shane Warne made the art famous, and it is now taken forward by someone as talented as Melie, the woman’s counterpart.
All of that pretending finally came to fruition in the Women’s T20 World Cup 2024. She was always quite the natural at leg spin, but come the big stage, the variations that she showed at the tournament, both in terms of bowling googlies or just using speed to her advantage, were noteworthy.
That googly of hers, the wicked one, proved to be a poison for great batters. The list included Deandra Dottin, Grace Harris, Ellyse Perry, and Fatima Sana, amongst many others, who were all deceived in ways they had never imagined.
Harris was out before she was even in at the crease. In Dottin’s case, a deafening silence followed; in Sana’s scenario, it was a ‘boarding call’ back to Pakistan. She wasn’t just scalping victims; she was picking key wickets at the most crucial junctures in every game. It was never a doubt that she would always be a shining star in the tournament.
But a constellation?
That’s exactly what Melie was. She was a constellation, one that burned bright every time the White Ferns turned their attention towards her. Every time Yogi wanted her Boo-Boo to help the team, she was there constantly.
While she might not have been as prolific with the bat, she was there when the team needed her the most, a 43 on a surface that was a little tricky for the White Ferns. Ultimately, putting up a display like that with the ball, 15 wickets @7.3, happens only once in a lifetime. You call your best players on to pick the key wickets, and that's what Melie did in the final as well, removing a determined Laura Wolvaardt, an in-form Anneke Bosch and rounded her night with Annerie Dercksen, with figures of 3/24 to go with a 38-ball 43.
“Bowling's what first got me in the White Ferns, and it's something that I've always wanted to keep getting better at. I think I've said it all along throughout the last year: it's the spin group we have - I've never enjoyed bowling so much; they make it so much fun, and I'm just enjoying myself when I'm out there,” Melie said after the final.
And players like Melie only turn up once in a lifetime. 15 wickets in a single edition might not happen in the future, even for the 24-year-old.
“So, to be a team that’s now playing in the final, having the chance to win a World Cup, I think, is going to inspire so many kids back home,” the leg-spinning all-rounder had said before the finale.
It is fitting that Melie isn’t just the Player of the Match or the Woman of the Tournament, but a role model away from it as well, with how she has championed mental health and helped people beyond her limits.
If you haven’t yet idolised her, what are you (exactly) waiting for?
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